LAKELAND AREA SWIMMING, LLC
LAKELAND, FLORIDA

At Lakeland Area Swimming, our mission is to offer training and practice groups for swimmers of all ages and ability levels. Our goal is to provide all of our athletes age specific training geared towards challenging and developing each individual to the best of THEIR abilities.  Few coaches in the history of Florida Southern College have achieved more in their first year than Moccasin head swimming coach Mike Blum. After taking over the program on June 26, 2015, Blum guided the Florida Southern men’s team to a third-place finish at the NCAA Division II National Finals, the women’s team to a 15th-place finish, and both teams to Sunshine State Conference championships. Along the way, eight men and eight women were All-Americans, one of each made Academic All-American, and two relay teams won gold medals at the National Finals. All of that helped Blum earn the SSC Coach-of-the-Year awards for both the men and women, and the CSCAA National Coach-of-the-Year award for the men. After his return to Florida Southern, Blum helped lead the Moccasin program to new heights as they recorded back-to-back national runner-up finishes in men’s swimming in 2013 and 2014, and won three Sunshine State Conference championships. During that same time, the women's program had two top-10 national finishes and was the SSC runner-up in 2014 and ‘15.    During his first tour with the Mocs from 2007-10, Blum helped the Mocs send eight swimmers to the NCAA Division II National Championships in 2010, the first ones to ever make it to the championships since FSC adopted the sport in 2003. All four men and all four women that season ended up earning All-American honors in at least one event. The following year, the Mocs had their first first-ever top-10 finish as a team, with the women placing seventh and men eighth. In his seven seasons as assistant coach, Blum, who primarily coached the distance swimmers, helped coach 56 Division II All-Americans, seven Division II national champions, 17 CSCAAA First-Team Scholastic All-Americans, four SSC Athletes-of-the-Year, four FSC Athletes-of-the-Year, one Polk County Female Collegiate Athlete-of-the-Year, two 2013 World Championship qualifiers, and one Olympic qualifier (Allan Gutierrez in the 2012 London Olympics). While at Gardner-Webb, Blum helped the program sign the most decorated recruiting class in men's team history and was responsible for coaching the distance swimmers and the 400 individual medley. In his one season at Gardner Webb, he assisted in the coaching of six school records, a third place men's team finish and a fourth place women's team finish at the 2012 Coastal Collegiate Conference Championships. Along with assisting the Moccasin swimming program, Blum also serves as the head coach of the Lakeland Area Swimming program. He is the head coach of all senior level swimmers and is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the program. In his time with Lakeland Area Swimming, Blum has coached several Polk County High School Swimmers of the Year, numerous Florida High School State Swimming qualifiers, Florida Age Group qualifiers and champions, NCSA Junior National qualifiers and Florida Senior Championship qualifiers and champions. He was an area representative to the Board of Directors of Florida Swimming in 2014. Prior to her days at Texas A&M, Sweeney competed for several nationally recognized club teams, including First Colony Swim Team in Sugarland, Texas, and Longhorn Aquatics in Austin, Texas before landing at SwimAtlanta in Lawrenceville, Georgia where she was coached by Chris Davis. While there Sweeney helped SwimAtlanta win the team title at the SC Nationals. She graduated from Brookwood High School in Snellville, Georgia in 2009, and was an 8-time medalist at the state high school meet, which included three individual gold medals and one relay gold.